About three in ten murderers were later found not guilty and executed. shoud we

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   solarcaptainposted 14 years ago

   About three in ten murderers were later found not guilty and executed. shoud we stop executions over
   
   The law says innocence is no bar to a finding of guilty in a capital case.  30% error seems acceptable. Other crimes which are pled before trial and forced through intimidation probably have a higher not guilty rate. Aren't a few errors ok to protect society?

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   SheriSappposted 14 years ago

   In my opinion, NO.  I do know it is tragic for innocent people to lose their lives, but were they really innocent?  You are not going to receive the death penalty (in most cases) for a first offense.  These scumbags spend YEARS on death row. With groups like the Innocence Project, and the ACLU working to get them off, if after all those years they are executed, TOO BAD. I know I sound really heartless, but if the death penalty were carried out more quickly, the taxpayers would save a fortune spent on the care of inmates. Knowing that if convicted and sentenced to death the penalty would be carried out within say 3 years, some people MAY reconsider BEFORE committing the crime.

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   tunelessposted 14 years ago

   I'm English so the notion of the death penalty is slightly disturbing in many ways as it's alien in my culture. If you have a death penalty in your society I suppose you must accept that there will be a margin of error and innocent people will die as a result of your system.
   
   So, to follow the logical argument, and to say that's accepted, why wait so very, very long to kill your prisoners? If the system is accepted then executions should be immediately after the appeals process is complete I'd have thought.
   
   The fact that prisoners are on death row for years suggests an underlying uncertainty in the use of the death penalty as a punishment, be that for cultural or political reasons.
   
   The end result seems to me to be a pretty miserable torture whereby you're sentenced to several years of psychological abuse before being killed. Perhaps that's the point. Whether that's a sucessful deterrent I don't know.

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   christalluna1124posted 14 years ago

   I worked for 25 years in the Texas Department of Corrections and for the State and Federal Courts. I have worked with adult and juvenile offenders. I also support Project Innocence, more appeals for inmates, ACLU and mandatory DNA testing of evidence when necessary. Also do not fool yourself into thinking that you can not be sentenced to die for a first offense. Texas has the busiest death chamber in the United States, something I am not proud of. I am not against the death penalty, I do belive it should be applied fairly and only when there is no other way to protect society. Believe me when I tell you that doing life is a much harsher penalty than dying. Some of the abuse suffered by the inmates at the hands of the staff are the things of nightmares. So before we take that step to take another persons life, we need to be absolutely sure that there is no shred of innocence, even if this takes years. Those years are not spent in luxury, trust me I know from experience,

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   carolina muscleposted 14 years ago

   from my viewpoint, the chances of one person being wrongly executed makes the whole practice intolerable... and 30%??
   no. one would certainly not believe that such errors were 'ok to protect society' if he or one of his loved ones were to be the one sacrificed.

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   oscillationatendposted 13 years ago

   I think that even if I was wrongly accused of a murder and put to death...I'd at least die knowing something was being done about crime rate and prison population.
   
   Sorry, but it's not about God. It's about money. And if you seemed to have committed a crime, you're going to do the time--or get buried trying.

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   Sunny2o0oposted 12 years ago

   I support the death penalty, and the reason is this:  apart from arguments concerning the value of human life, redemption, and whether or not the state has the right to take a life (all arguments that will get you nowhere with me in opposing the death penalty), most of the arguments against the death penalty boil down to the fact that you could get it wrong, which is actually an argument against the entirety of the justice system rather than merely one component of it.  People just get squeamish because a prisoner can always be released from jail, but you can't raise the dead (or, at least, not in any form that I would like witness).  Personally, I think the differences that people like to see between these two outcomes provide a false sense of comfort--the person that you threw into jail with a life sentence and who has served 25 years before being released is just as dead as the person who you executed.  The person that you threw in jail is gone.  They have no chance at a normal life--a family, a good career, ect.

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